"After a fairly long period of time, several months, I think it's almost fair to say, I hadn't made one single meaningful decision. My reluctance was just a state of discomfort. I didn't feel the confidence. It might have been I didn't have all the data, I hadn't spent enough time. But part of it was a little bit of self-imposed inertia, and nervousness and anxiety."

A conversation with Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs' CEO, was something of a wakeup call. Schwartz recounted:

"Lloyd said, 'You know, it's okay to make a mistake.' Very empowering. Because what he's really saying in that very short one-minute exchange is, 'I trust you're not going to make a big mistake.' He didn't need to say this, he wasn't going to let me make a big mistake, but he was really encouraging me to take risk and have the confidence and trust my own judgment."

Schwartz's story recalls a similar anecdote from leadership expert Simon Sinek, who said the best boss he ever had never answered any questions. Sinek previously told Business Insider:

"I'd be like, 'Hey, Peter, what do you think we should do?' He'd be like, 'What do you think we should do?' I'm like, 'Well, I think we should do this.' He's like, 'Well then, do that.'

"The guy never answered a damn question, but what he taught me was self-reliance. What he taught me to do was trust myself, and if I made the wrong decision, he always had my back."

Even if you don't have a boss pushing you to make decisions on your own, you might want to push yourself. According to the researchers behind the CEO Genome Project — which assessed 2,000 CEOs — high-performing CEOs are described as "decisive," even if they don't necessarily make the right decision every time.